


Sherlock's Family (Prologue)

by Lue4028



Series: The Most Dangerous Chemical [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Johnlock - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-20
Updated: 2014-12-09
Packaged: 2018-02-26 08:13:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2644559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lue4028/pseuds/Lue4028
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This scene is misplaced in the chronology, but I'm going to put it here for now.</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"You've been playing games with the Moriarty boy."

"So what if I have?"

" _So what?_ " Mycroft asks in disbelief. 

"There's very little you can do about it."

"Quite the contrary, dear boy."

Mycroft makes a beeline to the table to retrieve an envelope and flutters the letter between his fingers.

"What is that?" Sherlock looks at him suspiciously, growing slightly worried.

"Your acceptance letter abroad."

"My _what_?"

"I am going to miss you, my beloved little brother. Six months is a long time."

"You didn't!" Sherlock gapes at him, wide-eyed and appalled. 

Mycroft gives a signal and two men from Mycroft's security detail emerge from the front door.

"You can't do this to me! Mother, you can't let him do this!" Sherlock exclaims, struggling against his escorts' attempts to take him to the car outside. Redbeard looks up from his nap, hearing his master in distress.

"Where is he going, Mycroft?" Mrs. Holmes inquires.

Mycroft shows Mrs.Holmes the letter. She gasps with delight. "Oh, I love that school! You'll say hello to Dr. Harbater, won't you?"

" _Mother!_ " Sherlock reprimands her indignantly, but is subsequently hustled out the door.

"Goodness, loves. We can hear you all the way across the street. What's all the ruckus?" Mr. Holmes walks in with the mail, then looks around, puzzled. "Are we missing a boy?"

"Indeed, father. Last time I checked three minus one did amount to two," Mycroft sneers derisively. The other one seated behind the armchair lifts his teacup and gives it a flourish in affirmation of his brother's comment.

"Oh you disappoint me, Mycroft," Mrs. Holmes tuts, "When was the last time you checked? 1909? Haven't you read Whitehead's works yet?"

"I live in a very real world mother. If two started equaling three, I would know about it," Mycroft states curtly, then adds, "And put it to good use ripping off the Americans."

"Really, I can't find him anywhere. What have you two done with him?" Mr. Holmes asks, scratching his head, having checked the bedrooms and library.

"Not to worry, Father. He'll turn up sooner or later," Mycroft smiles, "Isn't it so, mummy?"

"Quite right."

Redbeard whines unhappily.


	2. Chapter 2

"John! John!" Mike runs over, waving two envelopes in his hand.

"What?"

"Our letters came in!"

"How did you get my mail?"

"Nevermind that. Open it," Mike hands him the letter, waving it in his face. John takes it and splits open the seal. He pulls the letter out.

"So?"

John glances over the first page and reads the second.

"Did you get in?"

 

"Full scholarship,"  John reads, then looks up with a smirk, "We're already gone."

"Yes!" Mike high-fives him.

"So are you going to let the folks know?"

"Like hell. I'll need a running head start before they find out." 


	3. Chapter 3

"I refuse to be exiled to a land of rednecks with a GDP of European exports and a national debt that has quintupled since 1993!" Sherlock yells, then falls through the entryway of his brother's private jet.

"I will remember this! Mycroft will pay very dearly- tell him I said that!" He yells out the hatch, which closes in his face.

Sherlock hisses and throws himself on a seat, his temple pulsing. He rubs his head with his fingers, then, slowly, turns to look at the person seated beside him. He starts to laugh to himself, his shoulders shaking. He turns away, scrubbing his face with his hand, and laughs out loud.

"Twizzler?" Moriarty offers him the bag, looking him benignly through his sunglasses as he chews on the fruit snack.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This scene is misplaced in the chronology, but I'm going to put it here for now.

Sherlock walks up the driveway with a grimace on his face. John is a step behind him.

Mr. Holmes opens the door preemptively. His eyes widen with instant recognition and he flings his arms around Sherlock in a awfully fond hug.

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock looks horrified for an instant, then settles into catatonic shock. John stands by flabbergasted. His eyes flicker between the two, his brain unable to reconcile how similar they look and how different they are.

“Father, if you would be so kind, get off,” Sherlock relays icily, and Mr. Holmes withdraws.

“How was the trip? I’m sorry about what they did-sending you off like that.”

“Yes, well, , it wouldn’t have _happened_ if it weren’t for your inane lack of intelligence and parental responsibility,” Sherlock snaps at him viciously. John blinks, nonplussed.

“Indeed. Thankfully you came back in one piece,” he smiles at him, hands still on Sherlock’s shoulders. “Well, off you go,” he says, sending him off into the house with a cursory pat on the back.

 “John Watson isn’t it?” Mr. Holmes turns his attention to John offers a handshake, which John reciprocates.

“Uh, yes. How do you do?”  John smiles politely, painting over the frazzling interaction he’d just witnessed with a semi-solid degree of composure. Mr. Holmes flashes a warm smile, shaking his hand appreciatively.

“Wonderful! Wonderful to meet you,” Mr. Holmes beams at him in delight, “Please, come in.” John follows in through the threshold and the door shuts behind him.

\--

“So are you two rooming together?” Mr. Holmes asks John. They are both in the kitchen collecting plates and silverware to the set the table. The rest of the family is disinterested in this occupation, aside from Mrs. Holmes who remains to be seen, and Mycroft, who’s tied up in the second cold war this month-- silently underway despite public unawareness.

“Yes. We’re have an apartment in Southwark. Um, he hasn’t told you?”

“Good! Glad that all got sorted out,” Mr. Holmes says with relief, “I’m so happy he’s finally found a friend, you know. He’s a darling boy but he’s always had trouble with making friends,” Mr. Holmes informs him. John is staring at the man in partly concealed fascination. Such a tender sentiment behind why he was so glad to meet John.

“Has he?”

“Well, that is, excluding Jimmy… but I never did like that Moriarty fellow,” he ponders.

“Neither did I,” John agrees.

“So you’ve met him. He’s a off-key kind of soul isn’t he?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” John allows.

“You wouldn’t believe all the nonsense those two got up to before Sherlock left,” Mr. Holmes, shakes his head, handing John the plates, “I do hope they haven’t started up again.” Then with a flash of inspiration, he adds, “Did I tell you, there was one time…”

Sherlock and the other one are sitting a room across, sipping Darjeeling.

“Are you watching this Sherlock? Look at those two! At this rate, John might just leave you for _father_!” the other one sniggers, appalled.

Sherlock’s tea takes a turn down the wrong pipe.

“You know I was only making fun, Sherlock,” the other one smirks in response to his younger sibling’s hacking cough.

Sherlock puts his tea down on the saucer, hand shaking. He eyes the pair beadily and decides this has to stop. John deigning to talk to his imbecilic father is too humiliating, even by association. His eyes narrow as John doubles over from laughing suddenly. This expires the last of Sherlock’s patience and he gets off the chair to transverse the room.

“Sherlock got trapped in the storm drain and we had to pull him out- poor fellow. It had Moriarty written all over it.”

“You’re not serious.” John says. Mr. Holmes shrugs earnestly.

“But how did he get down there?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, I did not get stuck down there, it was an _intentional_ and _carefully delineated plan_ \- which you ruined! Might I add,” Sherlock intervenes haughtily.

“Sherlock, will you set the knives out?”

Sherlock seethes and snatches John’s hand, leading him out of the kitchen area.

“What is it, Sherlock?” John asks.

"If you want to engage in the ridiculous culturally accepted antic of father-son bonding, I suggest you do it with your own father!"

"Can't you deduce that I don't have one?"

Sherlock narrows his eyes and rubs his bottom lip in contemplation. "Dead?"

"Yes."

"That's even better."

Finally Mrs. Holmes makes her entrance through the doorway and intercedes the pair, carrying a grocery bag. “Oh hello there. You’re the Watson chap.”

“Hello, Mrs. Holmes. Would you like help with that?” John asks, indicating the bag.

“Yes, what are you?” Mrs. Holmes demands, steering the bag away from him. She seems to think John is offering to help with her question, not the bag. But John doesn't see how that's possible since she asked her question only after he offered to help.

“I’m sorry?”

“Mathematician, physicist, philosopher?” Mrs. Holmes clarifies.

“I’m a premedical student.”

Mrs. Holmes frowns in exasperation and turns to Sherlock.

“Sherlock, I told you I wanted an _interesting_ son-in-law,” she gripes and John does a double take, “Not one of your dull chemistry bookies.”

“It may startle you to know, Mother, that I don’t bloody care, and I don’t pick my friends with any regard to whether you deem them interesting or not,” Sherlock replies nonchalantly.

Then, realizing he's being inconsiderate, he turns to John and asks, "Is 'friend' okay? Or would you prefer a more intimate term of reference? You don't want to be her _son-in-law_ , do you?" He mutters with disgust, more concerned with how dreadful it is to be his mother's son than he is with the implication.

_That they would have to be married._

John looks at him, speechless and bewildered.

“Just be thankful he’s not conspiring with the sociopath anymore,” queue Mycroft, entering from the peanut gallery, also with a bag of groceries. He looks a bit odd with groceries, but then, so does his mother. Domesticity doesn't quite suit them.

“I should have thought Jim was an improvement,” Mrs. Holmes mutters disappointedly, "At least he wasn't boring."


End file.
